A Question on Minions...

[sirwmholder]

I was wondering if this has been addressed yet... Minions don't die on a miss... so does that mean when a Wizard throws a ball of fire into a small room packed full of minions but rolls a two... the entire room escapes unscathe... or is it smoldering with unreconizable remains of countless dead?

Thanks for your time
William Holder

 

[Khime]

You make a seperate attack roll for every target in a Close or Area attack. Any minion you miss lives, any minion you hit dies (assuming your attack does at least 1 point of damage, and gets past any resistances and/or temporary hit points they have first).

If you're specifically refering to fireball, then yes, any minion you missed would not take the half damage from the miss.

 

[Bison]

by a strict reading of the rules, the minions are not harmed.

they are probably a little scorched, perhaps a burn or two, but it wouldnt slow them down.

 

[sirwmholder]

Aye that was what I was thinking as well... just making sure I read the rules right.

 

[Khime]

Keep in mind that the entire room escapes unscathed only if you miss every minion. So you can still have some smoking unrecognizable remains mixed in with the surviving minions.

 

[Aservan]

Think of it this way: some of the minions used the corpses of their pals as living shields and came away with minor burns. The smoking corpses were of course not so lucky.

 

[Lurker37]

Or you can say that the missed minions got singed, but didn't get burned directly from the flames, and so survive.

Remember - the 1 Hit point thing is an abstrraction so they die in one hit. You can still describe them as bruised and/or singed, just not Bloodied.

 

[Runestar]

The funny thing comes when you realize that it is theoretically possible to eventually kill a normal foe through missed damage, but not a minion. So while 6 missed fireballs can still off a normal kobold (because it still takes 1/2 damage), the minion escapes completely unscathed!

 

[Jhaelen]

Or you can say that the missed minions got singed, but didn't get burned directly from the flames, and so survive.

This. Nobody escapes a fireball unscathed!

 

[ExploderWizard]

The funny thing comes when you realize that it is theoretically possible to eventually kill a normal foe through missed damage, but not a minion. So while 6 missed fireballs can still off a normal kobold (because it still takes 1/2 damage), the minion escapes completely unscathed!

Yep. Thus the major problem with the minion rules. If they are supposed to be that fragile then let them take half damage as normal and get wiped out in huge blocks. Nothing to make a wizard feel more useless than hurling a fireball into a group of 10 minions and only hitting 1 or 2 of them. The DM can simply send in more waves. Minions (if used at all) should be like potato chips- no one can kill just one.